


if you wanna break these walls down, you're gonna get bruised

by theformerone



Series: MultiSaku Month 2018 [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bodyguard AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 04:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15041135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: “You don’t come here often,” comes a voice from her left, and Konan sighs into her drink. “I would’ve seen you before."MultiSaku Month Day 8: SakuKonan





	if you wanna break these walls down, you're gonna get bruised

Konan has seen uglier marks. Uchiha Obito (formerly known as Tobi, and she recalls that with a snarl, remembers Nagato’s prone form, Yahiko spitting with rage in the aftermath of Tobi’s betrayal) is number one on her hit list, and Akatsuki isn’t even contracting her to do it.

Trust a guy from Fire Country to pussyfoot out the second his childhood sweetheart batted those big black eyes at him. Hatake Kakashi was a damned menace. Konan wanted his throat next, after she dug her heel into Obito’s windpipe. Through his _mouth_.

“Will you fuckin’ calm down for two whole ass minutes, you pagan bitch?”

Konan flicks her gaze to Hidan, resplendent in his black suit and red tie. The tie of course, is loose around his throat and the first five buttons of his shirt are undone. He looks as unseemly as he always does, despite the occasion. For the heir of the oldest, most expensive onsen in Hot Springs, he dresses like the heathen he is.

“You do your job,” she says coolly, “and I’ll do mine.”

Making sure no one stabs Hidan is a cakewalk. Mostly because the people who want to stab Hidan are usually bad at it. The way he uses his family’s money to his own devices (particularly in weapons dealing) put a pretty big target on his back. The way he called anyone who was not a Jashinist a ‘heathen fuck’ or a ‘pagan dipshit’ was similarly endearing. Hidan didn’t have many friends.

Konan regrets drafting him into Akatsuki. His connection was a valuable one, and he didn’t have a weak stomach for murder, or any of the other sordid things the organization took part in. But he was annoying.

Hidan scoffs, running a hand over his gelled back hair.

“Fuckin’ relax,” he says. “We know there’s a hit out on me, and those Leaf fucks will send someone who has inside info to come get me. You know it’ll be Obito, so calm the fuck down like he isn’t gonna show up.”

That much was true. That Madara man (the one that made Konan’s skin crawl, that Nagato had the upmost faith in, that Yahiko looked to for guidance) was convinced that a (new) hit was put out on Hidan, and that Obito would be the one to carry it out. He was usually right in the intel he gave to Akatsuki, so Konan trusted him. But she didn’t like the way Nagato seemed to hang on his words. Konan had seen megalomaniacs, had seen men convinced of their own superior worth. She didn’t want to watch her brothers get sucked in by a man like that. It would be the end of Akatsuki if they did.

“Be quiet,” she says, “and try not to cause an incident.”

Hidan gives a deep throaty laugh at that, and lights a cigarette though the venue for this party is very much non-smoking.

“You do your job,” he says, grinning meanly, “and I’ll do mine.”

Konan says a prayer for patience, and follows Hidan inside.

She’d scoped the venue the night before, memorized its layouts. There were only about three places that’d be good for a silent assassination, and while Konan was keen on putting a stiletto knife in Obito’s remaining eye where all the cameras could see, she knew the value of discretion.

Fire Country would respond violently in kind to every kind of violence against one of their people. Konan didn’t like it, but she could appreciate the value of having a wide enough reaching military to make something like that possible. But she had spent a childhood underground, feeding freedom fighters, carrying messages, getting stopped and harassed by invading armies, threatened with violence, with rape, with death, and had come out the other side nine times as deadly as any woman born outside of Haze Country.

She fans out, watches the room. She knows that Hidan can handle himself as well as she can. She’s less around as a bodyguard, more around to find Uchiha Obito and stab him until he stops moving. Bodyguard is just a good cover. Yahiko is the face of Akatsuki, and Nagato is his right hand. Konan is his left, a card hidden behind his back. She rarely leaves Haze Country; that’s for the boys. Konan holds down the fort.

Some people think she’s the weak link of the three of them because of it. The soft spot in the triumvirate. Yahiko and Nagato keep her in Haze because if Konan leaves, it’s because she’s on the warpath. And she won’t come home until she’s had the blood she left for.

She makes her way to the bar. Obito liked to drink. She knows he threw them back with Deidara, and if he starts a party anywhere, he starts it at a bar. She orders a vodka cranberry for herself, sips at it idly. She turns around, standing. She spots Hidan’s white lilac head bobbing in the crowd, and narrows her eyes. He’s always good when he’s out on a job, and by good, she means that he’s less annoying than he usually is. He was know for his bad attitude, but he was a professional when he was on the clock. That was what she had drafted him into Akatsuki for, not his religious fanaticism and his penchant for cursing at anyone who looked at him twice.

“You don’t come here often,” comes a voice from her left, and Konan sighs into her drink.

She doesn’t like getting hit on when she’s working. She debates the merits of just ignoring whoever thinks talking to her is a good idea. Shutting them down flatly either made people try harder or get angry, and Konan could handle both of them, though she was loathe to.

“I would’ve seen you before,” the voice says, and the only thing that makes Konan look over in interest is the fact that the voice belongs to a woman.

She’s pretty. Pink hair pulled back out of her face, and a tailored red suit, no shirt underneath. There’s a purple diamond tattooed on her forehead that puts Konan on the defensive. The Slug Princess didn’t take disciples often, and it’s a mark against Akatsuki’s intel that Konan only finds out now. Still, there is something vaguely familiar about her.

“What’re you drinking?” the woman asks, her elbow on the bar.

Konan lifts an eyebrow and takes another sip from her cup.

“What’s it to you?”

The woman drums her fingers on the bar, licking her lips.

“I’d like to pay for your next round.”

Konan turns her eyes back on the crowd, and picks Hidan out of it. He hasn’t managed to start a fight. Yet.

“Not interested,” she says.

The pink haired woman doesn’t seem deterred. Rather, she turns around when the barkeep returns with her sake, and she drinks it like it’s sugar water.

“He’s not here,” the woman offers from over her shoulder, waving at the barkeep to keep them coming.

Konan swirls the ice in her glass, and watches Hidan.

“I don’t know you, or what you’re talking about.”

She knows better than to leave. She doubted a disciple of the Slug Princess would turn rogue against Fire Country, but if she was double dealing like Orochimaru had, Konan had ears that were willing to listen.

“You,” the woman in the red suit says, “are expecting a black haired, one-eyed loudmouth to appear tonight.”

She doesn’t show a sign that the words have hit home. Konan takes another sip of her drink, and counts the knives on her person.

“But he won’t.”

She turns her head so that she can look at the woman in the suit, and she’s smiling as she drinks her second cup of sake.

“You got me instead,” she says cheerily.

Konan blinks impassively.

“Oh I like you, Angel,” she purrs. “They told me I might, and they were right.”

Konan was indifferent toward the nickname, but if this woman knew it, it meant she was high ranking in Fire Country. Wherever she was from and whatever she was here to do, she had been debriefed well.

“And who are you?” Konan asks. “So that I have a name for the face that’s been bothering me.”

The woman smiles at her, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Konan clocks the untidy scars on the woman’s hands, the knuckles that are clearly thick from being broken, healed, and broken again. A fighter, that was for sure. A heavy hitter at that.

“You,” she says, “can call me Cosmos.”

Konan knows that name. Cosmos. Definitely a heavy hitter, bodyguard and close friend to the Uzumaki kid she and her boys were trying to get their hands on. But what was she doing so far away from Fire Country?

“Like the flower or the phenomenon?” Konan asks.

Cosmos winks prettily at her.

“Dealer’s choice,” she replies. “I’ll let you decide.”

“Hm.”

She lets them lapse into silence, chewing on the woman’s information. Obito wasn’t there, or at least, he wasn’t supposedly. Just because the girl was from Fire Country didn’t mean that she had access to that much information, or that she wasn’t feeding Konan false information.

“I swear, Angel, he isn’t here,” Cosmos continues, smilingly.

Konan looks at the woman, assessing.

“And why would you tell me that?”

Cosmos turns, inclines her head like she’s imparting a secret.

“I hate to see a beautiful woman wait around for a man that won’t show up,” she says. “It’s like watching a flower that won’t bloom.”

Konan sets her drink down on the counter. The barkeep sweeps it away and replaces it with another before she has the chance to put up her hand to tell him she isn’t interested.

“I insist,” Cosmos says.

“Getting a woman drunk is impolite,” Konan replies, tone clipped.

“Angel, I would never,” she replies, a hand over her heart as she says it. “I just want you to loosen up.”

“No, thank you.”

She pushes off of the counter, leaving the drink behind. She turns to go, but a hand on her wrist stops her. In a movement fluid from a childhood of war, Konan pulls a knife out of the holster the slit of her dress reveals, turning as she does so that she’s placed herself squarely in the arms of the woman who thought it would be a good idea to put a hand on her.

Cosmos looks completely nonplussed.

“If you slit my throat, you’ll get blood all over that pretty dress of yours,” she says, still smiling.

“You don’t know when to leave well enough alone,” Konan replies, eyes narrowed.

Cosmos tightens her grip. Konan grits her teeth. She’s much stronger than she looks. Konan can tell that she won’t have to squeeze much harder to snap her wrist.

“I have a message,” she says.

“Then give it and leave.”

Cosmos lets out a low whistle, but uses her free hand to lift her filled choko to her lips to have another drink. She lets out a sigh of satisfaction when the liquor goes down.

“I’m here for Hidan,” Cosmos says, “but a good friend of mine is cousins with a good friend of yours.”

Uzumaki. That was Nagato’s family name. He didn’t go by it anymore. The genocide that placed him and his family as refugees in Haze kept him from using it in this day and age.

“He wants to have a conversation,” she continues. “I’m here to let you know. See if we could facilitate a discussion.”

She punctuates her sentence with a lick on her lips. Konan tilts her head, watching, feeling as Cosmos releases her wrist so that she can place her arms around Konan’s hips.

“A discussion?”

Cosmos nods slowly, and the movement folds some of the delicate skin of her throat over Konan’s knife.

“Those cousins? They want the same thing. They’re just looking at different means of getting it.”

Konan narrows her eyes. What did this girl, what did the Uzumaki boy know about Nagato’s dream? About Yahiko’s dream?

She lifts a hand to the comm in her ear, well aware that it’s on and that Hidan will call if he needs her. She hears him through it, laughing and cursing up a storm. He doesn’t sound like he’s in distress. She still hadn’t out ruled the possibility that she’s being played, and that Obito is here, or that she has a partner.

Cosmos rubs her thumbs over Konan’s hips, covered in the black fabric of her dress.

“You think we could start a conversation?” she asks, spreading her legs just a little bit more, and gently pulling Konan between them.

Bold. Konan liked bold. She liked women who weren’t bothered by her knives at their throats.

“If you can give me that traitor’s head on a plate, maybe we could,” she replies.

Cosmos tuts at her like she’s said something childish.

“While I am tempted,” she muses, “he’s friend of a friend, and I can’t.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about.”

She steps back to get out of Cosmos’ arms, willing to drop her knife to spare the woman’s life (and her own dress) to grab Hidan and leave. If Obito isn’t here, they can leave. It will irk her pride to have to return to Nagato’s bedside, to have to look Yahiko in the face and tell him she failed, but it is better to return with information than without anything at all.

Uzumaki Naruto wanted to make contact with Nagato. It was a bargaining chip the boys would be interested in, that was true enough.

“Naruto isn’t the last of the Uzumaki in Fire.”

That makes her stop. Cosmos sits there, elbows back on the bar, legs splayed open as if she’s waiting for Konan to return there.

“There are about forty,” she says. “They want a chief. By blood rights, your friend has a claim.”

A claim to the Uzumaki family title. They were a founding family of Whirlpool, held enough prestige even after the genocide that people stopped when one of the few of them left entered the room. With the name came respect, and whatever riches that Kiri hadn’t plundered from the island.

Those were the kinds of resources that Akatsuki needed, that Nagato needed. And they were his _family_. Somewhere among them, maybe there was an aunt, or an uncle, or a cousin. Someone who knew his parents.

Konan may have the coldest face of the three of them, but her heart was just as big as Yahiko’s, just as hungry for love as Nagato’s. She couldn’t begrudge him the chance.

He was weak now, but if the nominations happened when he was healed, then maybe…

Konan steps neatly back between Cosmos’ open red clad legs, runs an idle finger from her knee up her thigh. Cosmos tilts her head as she does it, waving the barkeep to bring her another round of sake.

“I assume you know where to find me,” she says.

Cosmos shrugs, smiling wickedly.

“And you, me.”

Konan nods, trailing her finger up the other woman’s hip, up the buttons of her suit jacket, to the bare skin between her breasts. Konan taps Cosmos’ sternum, drags the flat of her nail down it.

“We’re open to the conversation,” she says.

When she leans back this time, she expects the hand on the small of her back, keeping her from taking a full step back.

“And when can you and I have a conversation?” Cosmos asks.

Usually, Konan wouldn’t stand being as manhandled as much as she has been today. She’ll tolerate most tings for the sake of getting what she wants, stone faced the whole way through.

But now she allows the edges of her mouth quirk up in an approximation of a smile.

“You’re a flirt.”

Cosmos gives her a cheeky wink.

“So are you,” she says. “But I’m weak for a girl that knows her way around a knife.”

Konan lifts an eyebrow and places her hand on the bar behind Cosmos, lifting the second vodka cranberry. Hidan would handle himself. And if this turned out to be a ruse, she could easily break the glass in her hand over Cosmos’ face and call it a day.

“Is that so?” she asks, sipping the drink.

Cosmos gives a throaty laugh and pulls Konan in closer.

“It is.”


End file.
